Lord Stephen Hawking, the most accomplished sprinter Britain has ever produced, caused controversy in the scientific community yesterday by claiming that physicists have travelled backwards and forwards through the ages ‘for some time’ and have regularly altered the course of history for their own ends.

The world-record breaking athlete, made a Lord in the nineties in recognition of charitable contributions made by his unerringly successful stockbroking business, remarked ‘I can offer no concrete proof, of course, but hypothetically speaking it’s entirely possible that people could travel into the future. They could even track down the cure for, say, Motor Neurone Disease, travel back to their early life and cure themselves. Their life would then develop in a completely different direction – maybe they could even take a dose of futuristic and undetectable steroids that would make them physically less man and more Superman. Just, y’know, for example.’

But Lord Hawking faced criticism from rock star King of England, Brian Cox, who dismissed the idea of time travel as ‘pure fantasy’.

‘Ever since we first met and discussed the wonders of physics at Cambridge, even before it was discovered that a previously lost page of the Magna Carta proved my credentials as the nation’s monarch, Lord Hawking has had these far-fetched theories. But if it were true that a couple of nerdy science types, a bit stoned on a night watching Weird Science and Doctor Who, had managed to crack the secret of time travel and used it to satisfy their every whim, surely neither of these two brilliant minds would have been stupid enough to blab about it to all and sundry, and risk the prospect of a visit from time overlord Al ‘The Eliminator’ Einstein, who is known for sadistically searching for the Higgs Boson particle where the sun don’t shine.’

‘Next he’ll be telling me that someone changed history and created ‘Bikini Thursday’ themselves, rather than it being the result of a fair democratic process, it’s ludicrous’ King Brian ruled, as he placed another unlikely £1m online bet that Arsenal would lose to a 79th minute goal scored by Ipswich in the Cup.